Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsNot Quite Ready For Primetime
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2018
I had been contemplating various options to upgrade the stereo system in my car and, after consideration, decided it was worth the relatively cheap investment to experiment with the Garmin Speak. My car, a well cared for, excellent in all other aspects Honda Element has an aging head unit... while it does have an aux port, I often find myself glancing at my phone and that just doesn't seem like a good idea regarding safety.
Now, I will be honest, my expectations were rather low... I've been a competitive cyclist for nearly a decade and use (and still use) a variety of Garmin devices. These devices, while market leaders, tend to have a litany of bugs, poor UI, and bizarre data sharing issues. However, I still use them (currently I use a Fenix 5x for cross training/activity monitoring and an Edge 520 for cycling... and I've owned many generations of products in both veins). I don't want to muddy the water, with both rants and raves regarding these devices or the larger Garmin eco system, but I will be clear: I feared this would be a $120 boondoggle.
The good news: the device itself works well. When it will display directions, it's easy to see and understand. Being able to mount it within one's sight line (while observing the road), feels like a win from a safety standpoint. It does use Alexa, and our house is heavily tied to the Alexa ecosystem (smart cameras, locks, lights, Echo devices in multiple rooms). It's not as fast to connect to my iPhone as my Anker Bluetooth unit was, but it does connect and seems to do a fine job of taking over that role (Bluetooth audio).
That's about where the good news ends.
There are several problems, some of which might be related to the iOS version of the Garmin Speak App. For one, it's constantly losing the data connection, even if my phone shows full bars on LTE. Another, is that it seems to be terrible at directions. It won't find addresses in my contact list and several times has "found" directions to a business I didn't ask for and no verbal command will make it stop.
Basically a request starting with "Alexa, get directions to Jane Smith's house" ends up with "I found directions to Jane Johnson Photography" which the device will proceed to process... and nothing can make it stop. "Alexa, cancel directions." "Alexa, stop navigation." "Alexa ask Garmin to stop navigation" The list of commands that normally work do nothing and Alexa proceeds to provide useless navigation. Half the time, this works. The other half, you pretty much have to ask for new directions... even if you don't need them.
The other issue is that the data you're working with isn't nearly as robust as the sorts of crowdsourced data you can get from Waze. Waze, while terrible at routing (it's not good at predicting lane choice, et cetera), does a fantastic job (due to crowd sourcing) of accurately reporting the presence of police, wrecks, slow downs and the like. The Garmin data seems to have very little connection to traffic info. I often use Waze solely to predict when I will be home, as my commute on CO-36 (Boulder-Denver) is often beset by standstill traffic.
And then, I suspect due to data issues, it often just fails silently (note, this occurs even when it shows a "blue" ring). "Alexa play audio book." This works fine at home, picking up wherever I left off when using the Audible app or another Echo and on our two Echos and our Echo Show (there would be no reason this would be different on any Echo device), if there's an issue Alexa will tell you... the Speak just fails. Then, after a few rounds of this (with Amazon Music, Audible, podcasts), I just do it on my device.
The Speak App also lacks any way to provide feedback for failed commands and it also seems to have problems exporting this data to the Alexa ecosystem. If you look at the history of commands for each device in the Alexa app, the Speak device has hardly any history, even though I've been using it as recently as yesterday.
It's all just frustrating.
Pros:
- When it works, it's handy.
- The device itself is nice to look at and can provide useful feedback.
Cons:
- The app is undercooked.
- It just doesn't work most of the time, even with a strong data connection.
- One slight hardware issue: it completely takes over a power port (I was using a two-USB adapter for years to do things like... charge other Garmin devices when on bike trips).
I have hope for the future, but for now this might be going back. It could be merely a network issue, though my phone never has those hiccups, and perhaps if you live in a place where there are few obstacles and consistent signal strength, it's fantastic. I understand when I'm in the mountains and it's often offline, but in a tech heavy metro area like Denver when my phone is always on LTE with full bars, it makes little sense.
Save your money. Wait a few years.
UPDATE (4/2/2018): the software update process is obnoxious. You cannot control it. About once a week, I'm actively using the device (for audio or directions) and it decides to update the software and we sit in silence (or even pull over, as happened once when we were trying to navigate to a yet unvisited location) while it does its ring dance for ten-twenty minutes (no joke). Who is the PM in charge of this thing? You should be able to opt out or manually control when updates happen.
